


Staircase

by Phoenix_Creates



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, How Do I Tag, Spooky, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-13 10:13:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21242429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_Creates/pseuds/Phoenix_Creates
Summary: It was supposed to be a normal trip.





	Staircase

**Author's Note:**

> Don't look at them. Don't think about them. Don't talk about them. And for your own safety, please...  
don't climb them.
> 
> (This is the first time I've written some thing like this, so I am unsure what tags to include. If you see a tag I've neglected, let me know please.)

Genji wasn't one for camping.

It's not that he hated it; more like he would much rather spend his time doing anything else. He didn't see the appeal in sleeping in a tent for days, eating hotdogs and beans, and the countless bugs that would attack you. Not to mention all the animals that could maul you to death and the poisonous plants you could eat and possibly die from.

He wasn't too keen on his camping idea but he had to.

His family wasn't the outdoorsy type, preferring the comforts of internet, air-conditioning, king-sized beds, and lavish meals everyday. _Camping_ wasn't something a Shimada did. Maybe when he was younger, the idea of camping and roughing it out in the woods excited him and his older brother. Now, at the ages of 19 and 17, neither Shimada son wanted to be outdoors. But, once again, it wasn't up to them.

One of their grandparents (or great-grandparents for all Genji knew; he hadn't been paying attention when his father was explaining it) was going to pass away soon and wanted to spend his last moments among family and doing the things he enjoyed in his youth but hadn't had time for as he grew older. They had traveled around the world, eaten strange and exotic things, had even gone bungee -jumping (Genji really enjoyed that one), and finally, the family was going camping. Of course, because they had been doing so much, the elder said that no one had to accompany him anywhere, but Genji's father Sojiro insisted that they go.

Not for the family of course, but for the money. The elder that was dying still held a sizable portion of the Shimada corporate empire that he hadn't given up, and with that portion also came a large sum of money, money that Sojiro wanted. His plan had been to stay beside this elder for as long as possible so that the elder wouldn't consider anyone other than Sojiro as the inheritor.

_So behave and pretend you're having a good time_ was the only advice Sojiro had given. He had loathed the idea of going camping just as much as his wife and sons did, but his greed and ambition prevented him from just saying no. He wanted money and full control over the Shimada empire.

And for that reason, Genji and his brother Hanzo were forced to go on the trip.

* * *

Maybe it was a good thing.

Genji had to admit that the air felt fresher and their campsite was pretty enough. His father was irritable the whole time and only covered it up with fake smiles and enthusiasm. Their mother seemed to enjoy herself at least, busying herself with setting up their tents, getting food together, and taking pictures. Hanzo entertained himself with sketching the landscape and some of the trees.

_Nerd._ But at least Hanzo was enjoying himself. Genji couldn't say the same for himself; he couldn't find anything of interest out here to do. They weren't going on the trail until the camp was set up and that was taking forever since it was just his mom doing most of the work. He brought electronics with him like his handheld and his phone, but those were both useless if they ran out of power. Genji was not one for patience and he definitely couldn't just sit and draw like Hanzo was. He needed to do _something _before he died of boredom.

"Hanzo, let's go cliff-diving."

Hanzo didn't even look up from his sketchbook. Genji peeked over his shoulder at what he was drawing. The river in front of them, some trees, and a deer.

_Boring._

"No." Hanzo gestured to the trees in front of him and the few animals prancing through the grass. "I'm fine sitting here."

"Well I'm not. I'm bored and unless you want me to stand here and bother you while you're drawing, you're coming with me cliff-diving." He looked around the dirt for the oddest stick he could find and poked Hanzo in the cheek with it. "C'mon. Let's go."

Hanzo sighed deeply, figuring that Genji would make good on his promise and annoy him endlessly. 

* * *

They had probably only made it halfway up when Genji spotted them.

It was hard _not_ to notice them, but Genji had been so excited at the prospect of getting to the top of the waterfall that he almost missed them. But out the corner of his eyes, he noticed something out of place in the luscious forest and had to investigate it.

"Wait. Hanzo, check those out!"

They were an _eyesore_ and horrendously out of place out here. There, just a few feet away, was a staircase. It looked like something out of an old Victorian novel, polished back metal stairs that winded up in an odd little spiral. It wasn't even a big staircase, only about seven or eight steps on it. Against the bright green foliage and all the trees, they were an odd addition that stood out. It looked like someone was playing some kind of open-world game, built a stair-case without meaning to, and didn't bother deleting it when they moved to a new area. And they looked brand new; not like they had been out here for years and definitely not like any of the elements had affected them.

"Stairs?" Genji could hear Hanzo following him, though his footsteps were slower and a lot more cautious than Genji's were. "What are stairs doing in the middle of the forest?"

Genji didn't know but he sure as shit was going to check them out. Who could honestly say they found _stairs_ in the middle of the woods? And a spiral staircase at that? This could be an awesome discovery!

"Genji, maybe we should leave. Why are there _stairs_ in the forest? We should just get back on the trail and go." Hanzo sounded nervous. Like he was scared of something. Genji didn't know why; it was just a staircase.

"No way! Let's get a closer look!" And with that, Genji sprinted towards the stairs.

"Genji-" He could hear Hanzo take off after him, probably to stop him from what he was doing, but Genji had been closer and reached the stairs first, examining them fully. How _had_ they gotten out here anyways? It's not like someone had built a house out here and forgotten the stairs? Genji tried to think about it but no explanation made any sense.

He was only a few steps away from them when Genji started to feel different. His stomach was twisting in the oddest way. It wasn't because of something he ate or anything like that since he hadn't eaten for hours. He didn't feel sick or scared, just a bit off. Like he was doing something wrong even though he hadn't done anything to make him feel guilty. Just a second ago he was excited but now he...he couldn't place how he was feeling.

"Genji, we should leave. I'm serious. There's something...wrong about those stairs."

Genji had never heard Hanzo sound like that. He had heard Hanzo sound angry, had heard him sad, and had heard him happy. But he had never heard Hanzo sound so utterly terrified in his life. Even when they were children watching a scary movie, Hanzo never sounded scared. Until now. Something out here was terrifying his brother, someone who usually showed no fear. But hearing just how terrified he was...It made a stab of fear go through Genji's stomach. Maybe they should quit while they were ahead...

But curiosity won out over the fear.

"Just...take a picture Hanzo. One picture. And I swear, we can leave." A picture wouldn't hurt. It was harmless. Just one photo, so that when Genji told his friends about this, they wouldn't think he was bullshitting. So he could have a memento from this trip. So he could prove that he and his brother weren't crazy.

"I really don't..." Hanzo shook his head. He had gone deathly pale, eyes locked onto the staircase in front of them. His mouth was moving but he wasn't making any sounds, couldn't form the words he wanted to say. Genji watched him struggle with this for a minute or so before Hanzo finally found his voice. "One. One picture then we leave."

Genji nodded eagerly, climbing the stairs before Hanzo changed his mind. One picture and they'd be out his mind forever. Only, his feet felt so much heavier the more he tried to climb up the stairs. With every step, he felt like a ten-pound weight was getting added to his ankles. By the time he reached the top, he was exhausted and had only climbed a couple of stairs. He felt like he had run a marathon despite the fact that he climbed a small staircase. Maybe their trip to the top of the waterfall had taken more out of him than he thought. "Okay. I'm ready Hanzo."

Something was wrong. Even from up here, he could see Hanzo's fingers trembling as he raised the camera, nearly dropping it in his nervousness. It took him an eternity to finally raise the camera and only when Hanzo got into position did Genji realize what was wrong.

He couldn't hear anything.

His own breathing, the crunch of the leaves, the roaring of the water. It was all silent. Like someone had pressed the mute button on a remote. All the sounds from the forest suddenly vanished, leaving no sound to be detected. It freaked him out; he had just heard the birds overheard singing to one another, and now they've stopped suddenly. The waterfall they'd be climbing beside was suddenly still and quiet like the water just stopped flowing. There was absolutely no noise.

Then Hanzo's voice broke through the quiet.

"One...two..."

* * *

Jesse McCree loved his job as a SAR officer.

He'd been a volunteer for years before he finally applied for the position, and was over the moon when he was hired.

Being out in the wild felt like second nature to him. He loved the wilderness, loved animals, and liked the clean air better than anything. And his coworkers were the best someone could ask for. The other officers were a friendly bunch, a few of them vets who had been doing this for years. Some were young like him, eyes full of wonder as they patrolled around with him. And some were like him, not fresh enough to be a newbie but not in the game long enough to call himself a vet. They all worked together wonderfully and shared stories during their downtime. A lot of time it was just patrolling and cleaning up after campers, and other times it was the actual rescues that really got him going. The job itself had its moments, but he enjoyed them as well.

Though there were some unpleasant parts to it as well, such as snowstorms, heat waves, people getting lost or families getting separated, the numerous bugs, but he had gotten used to those things the longer he was an officer. Most of that stuff didn't bother him anymore.

It was the bodies that he had an issue with. He was starting to get numb to it, but a shiver went down his spine every time he found a body. Especially the...peculiar ones.

This was one of those moments.

They had gotten the call about a week ago. A teen had gone missing on his way to go cliff-diving with his brother. The brother, when the rest of his family found him, was an incoherent, bloody, screaming mess. He'd been stumbling around for hours, frenzied, almost getting himself injured as he wandered around. It had taken the family hours to call him down enough for him to explain what happened: He was out with his younger brother, named Genji, when he had suddenly gone missing. The elder brother, Hanzo, had no clue where Genji could've been.

Calls like these were common. Teens liked to go fucking around in the woods and wound up lost. Genji had probably been wasted and wandered away from his brother when Hanzo looked away for a moment. That was a common call they dealt with during vacations and school breaks. Genji was out there somewhere, and they would find him.

At least, that's what Jesse had thought. But the dogs couldn't find a trail, or they found one, but it led them on a wild goose chase through the forest. They ended up wandering in circles as the dogs tried to find the trail and the volunteers tried to look for some sort of trail Genji had left behind. But none of those things helped; Genji hadn't left any identifying marks around or any indication of which direction he had gone in. Hanzo was no help either. He always got this terrified look in his eyes whenever he tried to recall what happened and he'd stutter through his sentences so bad that they couldn't get anything out of him.

The search seemed fruitless, dragging on for days with no new breaks, until they got a call from a newbie saying they had found something. Jesse and an older vet, a guy named Gabe (who had also trained him) went to check it out. It was likely their guy, having wandered all the way to the other side of the woods.

But...

It had taken them a moment to understand what they were looking at, but it was obviously a body. Or, a corpse rather. A very dehydrated one at that. The skin was so dry and papery, translucent even. It had a sick, ashy color to it, one that wasn't anything they'd ever seen before. Jesse felt like the body would crumple into dust if they touched it. For a while, Jesse was sure this was someone long dead that they hadn't found before. Until Gabe pointed out the necklace just a few feet away, the same necklace the family said Genji always wore.

They found the body, but not the way they wanted to. And these were the situations that Jesse hated the most.

The oddest part though, what really creeped him out, was the position they found him in. The body was twisted in an unnatural way, like giant hands had grabbed his legs and head and twisted him into a spiral. Strangely enough, no bones poked through the skin although with the pressure and strain the body went through, along with the unnatural way it was found, something should've been broken and protruding from the skin.

Cruel as it was, the only comparison Jesse could draw was like a water bottle. Like someone had drained every last drop of water from the plastic but kept sucking and sucking, even though they were just sucking air. They just kept going until the bottle contorted, until it started to shrivel and shrink. That was how the body looked: dried out and contorted.

Like every drop of fluid in his body was sucked out of him and he was twisted into a spiral.

* * *

Just as he expected, the family was torn apart when Gabe reported to them what they had found, but no one was as distraught as the brother was. The moment he saw the necklace, he freaked, screaming and crying and clawing at himself. Claiming that it was his fault for what happened, that Genji was dead because of him, that he might as well have killed Genji. Gabe wasn't the best person to deal with emotion so he dealt with giving the family members the little facts they have while Jesse tried to console the brother. He was a people person at heart and knew how to comfort people in situations like this.

So he let the brother cry and scream as much as he wanted, until the worst of it was over and Hanzo was relatively calm. Despite the fact that he wanted to give him more time to grieve, there were still things they needed to smooth over, things only Hanzo could clear up for them.

"I really don't mean to do this, but I need to ask you a couple questions. Can you try to answer them for me?"

Hanzo nodded jerkily. He wasn't all the way here, Jesse could tell from the look in his eyes, but he was trying his best. "Y-Yes."

"Can you tell me what happened when you last saw Genji?" Had he been drunk or acting weirdly? Things like that could help them determine why they found Genji so far away from their campsite and why his body had been found the way it was.

"We were...supposed to go cliff-diving. And then...the-he saw them first, but there were...stairs."

"Stairs?" Jesse hadn't heard much about them, but every now and then, someone would mention coming across a flight of stairs. The first time he had heard this story, Jesse hadn't believed it and thought he was getting pranked. But the higher-ups shut down conversations about them and the newbies excitedly shared stories about them. Jesse had never seen them in person himself, but a few officers mentioned that one day he might.

And if he did, to just keep walking.

"I...have a photo," Hanzo said instead of answering. He pulled out his phone, the screen a bit cracked and stained with mud. He fumbled with it as he tried to unlock it, dropping it two or three times before finally unlocking it and handing it over to Jesse. "I took it before...before Genji..."

Jesse, for the second time, couldn't understand what he was looking it.

The phone was a high-quality one, something that had only come out last month. Other than the crack and the mud staining it, the phone was almost brand-new. It looked like it would take some really impressive photos, and yet with all of those factors, the picture Hanzo pulled up didn't look right; he couldn't understand why the image looked so distorted.

He could see a muted splash of color in the photo, probably Genji's hair, but everything was in dark greys and blacks. This was taken during the day and Jesse knew that for a fact, but the overall tone made it seem like this was taken at midnight. The only bright color was Genji's hair; everything else looked like static, fuzzy and unclear to his eyes. He could make out what looked like Genji, but that was all he could see arguably clearly. He didn't see any trees, no nature, nothing but two big splashes of black right above the green of Genji's hair. He honestly couldn't figure out what he was staring at,

Except, there was one other thing that stood out. One thing he could see clearly.

A dark, spiral staircase sitting in the center of the photo, clear as day.

* * *

Sending the Shimadas off was hard, but sending families away after reporting tragedy was never easy. It was part of the job he supposed, but a part he severely hated. A few vets said he'd be able to separate his emotions from his job, but it was alright if he still affected by the raw outpour of emotions that families could show. He was numb to a lot of things, but that wasn't one of them.

Once all the authorities retreated, all that he needed to do was clean up around the station. It was a tedious job, but Jesse volunteered to do it. He needed to do something to wipe away everything that happened today. He just couldn't shake the distraught look on Hanzo's face when he showed Jesse the photo, nor could he ignore the desperate wails Hanzo had given when presented with Genji's necklace. It was too much for him, a little too much. His feet carried him methodically around the station as he cleaned, and kept cleaning until he couldn't find a piece of garbage anywhere. He just needed to dump everything and he'd be fine.

He hadn't been paying attention to where he was going, but the air around him seemed to freeze when he stumbled across them.

Old, withered, and much taller than he was. Bright yellow, out of place near the station. A stairwell. Nothing like the photo Hanzo had shown him. These were bright and old whereas the ones Hanzo showed here dark and new. He was surprised that he had never seen them before as many times as he walked this path, but there they were.

It was almost like they were calling to him, garbled whispers in his ears and his feet slowly approached the stairs. His instincts were screaming at him to turn away, but the whispers started to get louder and his feet just kept taking him towards them, He didn't feel in control of his body, just a puppet as someone else moved him towards the stairs. Like they were calling to him. Despite his instincts, despite fight-or-flight kicking in, he kept walking.

Then Gabe's palm landed on his shoulder, hard and heavy, stopping him in place. Jesse jumped as everything seemed to snap back to reality. The air wasn't cold, the whispers went away, and the sounds of the forest, that he hadn't even realized he couldn't hear, suddenly hit his ears. He hadn't even realized that Gabe had come up behind him, didn't hear his footsteps. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and what he'd been doing. He'd been about to dump the trash and then...then... "Boss, I was just-"

Gabe looked past him to where he was staring but didn't react. He just turned Jesse away and led him back to the station. "Don't worry about it. Let's get back."

But Jesse couldn't. He knew Gabe had seen the stairs; they were right there! But he was pretending like they weren't there, that a stairwell all the way out here was just a normal, everyday thing. Had he heard the whispers too? Or how cold it got? "But Gabe, the st-"

Gabe slammed a palm over his mouth before he could finish and slowly shook his head. "I'm only going to tell you this once. If you see them, ignore them. And for your sake, don't climb them. You've seen what happens when you do."

Jesse was about to ask what he meant, then he thought about earlier. Gabe didn't mean...

Not a word passed between them. Gabe just kept leading him away, without acknowledging the oddity just behind them. Even though he shouldn't have, Jesse turned over his shoulder to look at them. He didn't expect them to move or anything, but when he managed to find them among the trees, he started to hear the whispers again, a dull ache settling in the back of his head.

Gabe squeezed his shoulder. "Let's go Jesse." His tone left no room for argument, so Jesse obeyed, tearing his gaze away from the stairs. He was supposed to ignore them, but Jesse couldn't get them out of his head.

Jesse loved his job. He really did. But it didn't come without its fair share of weird things. It looked like he was adding stairwells out here to that list.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween.
> 
> (Also, the thread this was inspired from is the SAR thread on r/nosleep that I came across. It's got some interesting stories and definitely worth the read.)


End file.
